


A Theorized Possible Side Effect

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Multi, Post-Mechanicsburg arc, Psychic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 21:30:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17231546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: Anonymous asked: What if Agatha had ended up mentally bonded to Gil and Tarvek after the si vales valeo link-up?--It’s just a sympathetic post-synchronization echo. Her awareness of what they would feel-think in a given situation is extrapolation based on her previous connection with the two of them, with occasional recalibration from context cues from the originals’ body language and speech, not a true gestalt. A theorized possible side effect.Anyway at the moment they all three have no reason to think about anything much but their mad scramble to defend the castle, the town, the loved ones inside it.She keeps not thinking much about it until she wakes in a strange lab with her innards scooped out to make place for the cold of absolute void and the blistering fury of a grieving fugue. Familiar. (Lars.)It feels the way it did when Lars died.Tarvek died. Martellus killed him.Martellus killed him.





	A Theorized Possible Side Effect

It’s just a sympathetic post-synchronization echo. Her awareness of what they would feel-think in a given situation is extrapolation based on her previous connection with the two of them, with occasional recalibration from context cues from the originals' body language and speech, not a true gestalt. A theorized possible side effect.  
  
Anyway at the moment they all three have no reason to think about anything much but their mad scramble to defend the castle, the town, the loved ones inside it.  
  
She keeps not thinking much about it until she wakes in a strange lab with her innards scooped out to make place for the cold of absolute void and the blistering fury of a grieving fugue. Familiar. (Lars.)  
  
It feels the way it did when Lars died.  
  
Tarvek died. Martellus killed him.  
  
Martellus killed him.  
  
He demonstrates the Touch of Kings. She demonstrates the sharp edge of a hatchet.  
  
It’s not like all his cells will die the second his head is off the rest of his body, and she has a whole lab to keep samples alive.  
  
She only feels better once she’s out on the snow with Violetta and Krosp, watching the Refuge of Storms carbonize into black dust.  
  
That’s one nest of vipers fewer to protect the Empire from.  
  
\--  
  
It’s a sympathetic post-synchronization echo. It may well save him. He knows Agatha and Tarvek don't want the same things his father's overlay does, so maybe all his ghosts will get in each other's way. Maybe there's a mental trick; to set them against each other, to bolster himself with the one who leans the way he wants to go.  
  
It may well save him --  
  
He loses them both.  
  
Startled fear-anger and sudden burning pain, the ghost of sensations -- then a void like space without stars. He loses them, he will later realize, the very millisecond Mechanicsburg is lost, out of his sight, out of his knowledge (out of his hands) and then he knows an echo wasn't all it was.  
  
He loses them both (he loses them three) and then the only thing left is the overlay.  
  
He loses them for _two_ years, five _months_ , two and _twenty days_ , loses them and _loses_ them until in the middle of a meeting with the polar lords' envoy for the tithe (he will _burn_ them if they push him again _he will burn them down through the water and into the bedrock miles below_ ) and he.  
  
In the black of night, the first faraway star blooms into an all-devouring sun.  
  
The overlay screams. With Agatha alive (Agatha alive and fighting with him, confusion-revulsion-determination) he can battle it and its preprogrammed advantages to a standstill.  
  
Not win. Not yet.  
  
Not yet.  
  
\--  
  
It's a sympathetic post-synchronization echo (it's not.) It's an echo of Agatha's incandescent will and Gil's possessive, desperate wrath (mine, _mine_ , nothing shall stand in my way.)  
  
When he wakes feeling worse than the first time he died (the time he died with them and was reborn anew) he knows the sick sleeplessness and the rot of long-lasting despair before he even hears them in Gil's voice, sees it on his strained face.  
  
But he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gil loves him beyond sanity and cannot lose him again, and that Agatha will find them soon.


End file.
